Mailbag: Adopting pets better than buying them

August 04, 2010

Lynn McCluney ("Animals need our help," Sounding Off, July 29) is right on the mark, especially with her suggestion to adopt pets from various animal shelters instead of buying them from pet stores, and having mandatory neutering and spaying.

The manner in which we treat animals is a reflection on our society. It is a shame that thousands of pet animals are either abandoned or sent to shelters by owners who did not have a commitment to take care of them, or education on what responsibilities to expect.

San Francisco is considering a ban on sale of pets from pet stores. Horror stories of animal cruelty at pet breeding places for dogs, cats, horses, etc. are often in the news. A status quo on this "life and death" matter is unacceptable.

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Maneck Bhujwala

Huntington Beach

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Keep an eye on mobile homes issue

Ideologues often do not understand or even care about the human costs and impacts of doctrinaire positions based upon their ideologies. On the national level, for example, many "gun nuts" don't care about firearms abuses under their warped interpretation of the Second Amendment. They put ideology over practicality and reason.

Want to own machine guns or buy "cop killer bullets"? Go right ahead, they would say. Your right is sacrosanct in our view. Forget protecting the public. No government intervention allowed.

There is an issue brewing in Huntington Beach that has the ideologues rattling their sabers. It is the ideology of "private property rights" and its application to the subdivision of mobile home parks ("Council approves park subdivision," May 20).

It holds that park owners should have the unfettered right to do anything they want with their property regardless of how it affects those owning residences on it. Under this subdivision ploy to get around current city ordinances protecting this vulnerable population (largely seniors on fixed incomes, many of whom have been in their homes for decades), manufactured housing owners would be forced to purchase the land their homes are on for hundreds of thousands of dollars per space. This would naturally bankrupt most homeowners and force them to either move or stay at the mercy of the park owners. This would kill resale value and make the manufactured homes themselves virtually worthless.